


a ghost at my side, so perfectly clear

by Ariesgirl666



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Heather M pov, I dont know where this came from I honestly dont, Intrusive Thoughts, Lesbian Heather MacNamara, Lesbians, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of self-harm, Panic Attacks, Second Person -Heather MacNamara, Unrequited Crush, kind of, not graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:12:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariesgirl666/pseuds/Ariesgirl666
Summary: At night, everything is the same -they play croquet on Veronica's lawn and laugh and sometimes Heather M dares to sneak a kiss from a laughing Heather C.In the morning, everything is different -Heather Duke avoids her like the plague, Veronica seems distant and foreign, and Heather MacNamara is trying so hard just to hold it together.





	1. every night, i dream you're still here

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i don't know where this came from, but i really liked trying to write from mac's pov. since she's my least favorite of the heathers, i felt like it was a good exercise. title & chapter titles from Digital Daggers' "Still Here".

You see Heather in your dreams. You haven’t told anyone about it -Heather would laugh, and Veronica would smile that weird little half-smile when she’s uncomfortable.

This time, you and Heather are sprawled out on Veronica’s croquet lawn, but Veronica and Heather Duke are nowhere to be found. Heather’s soft, manicured hand is on your cheek, and she’s smiling at you like you’re her whole world.

“I miss you, Heather,” she tells you, eyes clear and brighter than they’d been when she was _-alive, because she crashed through a coffee table after drinking a mug full of_ -at school, because here it was just the two of you.

“I miss you too,” you try to say, but your words catch on your throat _-_ they’re liquid like _-blue fluid staining Heather’s favorite carpet_ -and you choke on them.

“Such a pillowcase,” Heather laughs, and then she kisses you.

 

You wake with the taste of ashes and decay and something vaguely chemical in your mouth.


	2. when i awake, you disappear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather wishes she was still dreaming, but she's not, and real life is hurt feelings and unwanted hands on your thighs.  
> *non-graphic mention of rape*

Heather Duke has stopped throwing up since Heather Chandler _-died_ \- stopped coming to school. Or if she still does, she hasn’t told you. She’s become closer with Veronica, they’ve pulled away from you like a pair of blue & green satellites in orbit

(you wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, nobody took you seriously but Heather. When some of the boys laughed at you, Heather had stood in front of you in a red pinafore and a prettily scowling face and made them cry with just her _words_.)

Veronica doesn’t speak to you since the failed date with Kurt and Ram and sometimes she glances at you in that hurt-puppy way, and something gnaws at your core ( _They had promised to stay sober but it didn’t matter really, because you know that this is just how boys act and you can’t change that, even if you’d rather not have Ram’s sweaty disgusting hands on your breasts and you really don’t want to think about this anymore, are college boys different Heather, are they really, I wish you could tell me why you like them so much)_ so you try not to meet Veronica’s gaze. 

(Things are so much easier in your dreams -sometimes Duke and Veronica appear too, all of you in your matching blazers, and Heather Chandler reigns over you all, a pink lemonade in one hand and a croquet mallet in the other, your lips wet with her signature lipstick)


	3. musing through memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather revisits her childhood (then wishes she hadn't)

You kept a scrapbook when you were younger. It was yellow of course, but it had _-still has-_ red wildflowers pressed between the pages. When you open it again, the wildflowers crumple into dust in your hand, and the sight makes you so sick you need to put the scrapbook away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tfw you start out writing a drabble and suddenly it has 12 chapters and a story plan


	4. losing my grip in the grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather hates Tuesdays.

Heather Duke calls you and asks if you want a ride to school.

You wear a new pair of shoes.

Veronica and JD fight in their car, and Heather Duke giggles with you like old times.

Kurt and Ram killed themselves in a repressed homosexual suicide pact.

You hate Tuesdays.


	5. love turns to ashes with all that i wish i could say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather dreams and tries not to upset the natural order of things.

In your dream, you sit on the floor in Heather’s gazebo with the sun stripping away your defenses, and Heather’s cool hands in your hair, making you a braided crown like old times.

She’s talking about something that happened at school _-a funeral everyone dressed in black_ -and you laugh obligingly, and you know she’s smiling a red-lipped smile (the special smile, the one she save _-d_ \- s just for you). Her fingers massage your skull, and a noise escapes your lips almost inadvertently. She pauses. “What’s wrong?”

_-“Sorry about your friend. Thought she was just your typical airhead bitch. Guess I was wrong.-_

“Nothing, Heather. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

She finishes the braid and slips off of the wicker bench to sit beside you on the floor. Today, wisps of her blonde hair escape the red scrunchie. She wears a white sundress patterned with red cherries and her feet are bare. 

Feeling bold, you reach out to tuck a curl behind her ear. Her blue-gray eyes are surprised, her elegant eyebrows arch. “Heather?”

 _I love you_ , you try to say but you can’t say that, you couldn’t ever say that because there was a natural order to things, the Earth rotates around the Sun, never asking for anything in return, just happy to be in its light for a little while, and Heather is Queen and she has college boys at the call of every manicured finger, and you and Heather Duke walk behind her just a little bit, reminding the rest of Westerburg that they’re lucky to breathe the same air as Heather, and it’s alright to be in love with Heather Chandler because everyone is a little bit in love with Heather Chandler, even Veronica Sawyer, but it’s not okay to say it (she’d laugh, you know she’d laugh, and Heather Duke would find out and she would look at you with amusement or even worse pity) and that’s why you say nothing, pressing your lips to Heather’s instead.

 

_“it’s just practice, Heather,” you’d told her in May of last year. “just practice for kissing boys.”_

_“just practice?”_

_“yes.”_

_“…alright then.”_


	6. numbing the senses, i feel you slipping away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather MacNamara is not okay, and Heather Duke is red.

You bump into Betty Finn in the hallway, and instead of cowering, she just looks at  you with a deep, aching sympathy that makes you want to _-kill yourself_ -makes you want to scream.

If Heather were here, if Heather were here…

_she’d sashay through the halls, accidentally-on-purpose shove into Betty Finn and make her regret even looking at a Heather like that, as if the Heathers were only human_

 

Betty Finn looks a little closer at you with her peering, prying vision. “Heather, are you okay? You look a little pale.”

“She’s fine,” snaps another voice, and there’s Heather Duke, your savior, with a delicate sneer balanced on her lips. 

And she’s wearing red.


	7. fighting to hold on, clinging to just one more day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's on the goddamn bus again because all her rides to school are dead.

“That’s Heather’s scrunchie,” you tell her, shyly, at lunch, where Veronica is nowhere to be seen.  
She raises an eyebrow at you with none of Heather’s elegance. “Shut up Heather.”

Riding home on the bus, you have your first panic attack. (You don’t know what it is at the time, except that your lungs are compressing and your skin is too tight and your vision is spotty and _god Heather is this what it feels like to die?!_ )

Heather calls you on the phone that night. “You need to grow up, Heather,” she snaps. “Stop being such a baby and letting Betty Finn, of all people, scare you. ”  
“Yes, Heather,” you whisper and squeeze your eyes shut.

(You lie awake that night, listening to your parents scream at each other through marigold wallpaper, and the next morning you make a vain attempt to hide the body bags under your eyes)


	8. hidden companion, phantom be still in my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica may have a secret, but at least she has someone to share it with.

“Veronica?” You find her after cheer practice, leaving her boyfriend by his motorcycle. 

“Yeah, Heather?”

You fidget -she’s always been the one good with words -and your gaze drifts to Veronica’s boyfriend, smoking a cigarette. He meets your eyes evenly, but there’s something in that stare that you don’t like _at all_ and you snap your eyes back to Veronica’s familiar-but-not-as-familiar-as-they-used-to-be brown eyes. “Heather?” she prompts.

 _“DoyoumissHeather?”_ you burst out, a slushy mess.

“What?” She looks at you as if you had suggested she wear another color.

“Do you miss Heather?” you repeat, remembering to breathe. “After what happened?”

 

Veronica turns white as a _-corpse -_ sheet of paper. “Y-yeah,” she stammers. “I gotta go, Heather.”

As you leave, you see Veronica conferring anxiously with her boyfriend (maybe she did miss Heather more than she’d said, but you had a feeling that wasn’t quite it), both of them casting looks in your direction. 

 

You take the bus home again and dig your nails into your palms and tell yourself the tears are from the pain in your hands and not your heart.

 


	9. make me a promise that time won't erase us, that we were not lost from the start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather hates alcohol (but don't tell Heather, she'd crucify her)

You hear glass shattering in the kitchen and the sound of blows landing. You stand at the staircase in your yellow nightgown, listening to your parents scream at each other.

When you were fifteen, Heather and Heather slept over at your house. The three of you had snuck down in the middle of the night to try some of your mom’s alcohol from her high shelf.

Duke, ever the ballsy one, had balanced atop two chairs (she hadn’t quite hit her growth spurt yet) to get it.

“I’m not so sure about this,” you’d said once Duke had landed safely, gripping the neck of the bottle in her fist. “My mom -”

“Serves her right,” Chandler had said with a grin. Her blonde hair haloed around her head and she grinned a red lipstick grin -none of them were allowed to wear makeup, but Chandler had stolen it from her mom. She looked like a princess in her bare feet, pink silk nightgown, and red lipstick. 

Duke poured the glasses. 

“Don’t you want to do something daring, Heather? Something _bad_?”

Heather’s mouth was very close to yours -you could smell cranberry juice on her breath. You swallowed dryly and nodded. Heather was the only one who understood how shitty your home life was.

Duke turned back around and handed each of you a glass. She downed hers in one go then doubled over coughing and wincing. Chandler laughed so hard she cried. She sipped hers, like a real lady. You tried to mimic what she did. It was the only time alcohol had tasted good to you -when it was in one of your mom’s glasses, diluted with water, Heather Chandler’s eyes on you and you alone.

(After that, you drank more but it just didn’t taste the same out of a greasy-necked bottle or a red plastic cup).

You can’t drink it anymore -the taste of it reminds you of _that night_ with Kurt and Ram and you _can’t_ , you just _can’t_ (you tried to drink it once, sitting alone in your pajamas with a bottle of your mom’s vodka. it burned your throat like _-fucking drain cleaner -_ and you retched it up on the carpet and _god heather bulimia is_ so _’87_ ) and shit you should have been nicer to Heather shouldn’t you? (Too fucking late now)


	10. ever so slightly out of reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather hopes she's doing the right thing.  
> Trigger warnings for: thoughts of suicide, intrusive thoughts, depression, some eighties homophobic slurs, internalized homophobia.  
> (fun chapter.)

You wonder if anyone would miss you if you died. 

The thought’s slightly frightening, but it isn’t unwelcome. 

Your mom’s screaming at you again (why does she have to be so fucking critical why doesn’t she understand). She’d be sad, probably sadder than Heather’s stepmom but not as sad as Kurt and Ram’s dads were. Rumor has it they’re fags too. You wonders if that’s how it works, if being a dyke runs in the bloodline like a disease.( _Does that makes your mother a dyke too? Maybe that’s why she hates Dad so much._ )

Veronica might be sad but honestly it’s so hard to tell what Veronica’s thinking these days. She never calls you back, and she’s always with that weird boyfriend at lunch.

So at lunch, the only person you talk to anymore is Heather. She’s wearing all red now, and she looks ( _wicked_ ) beautiful in it. At lunch, she doesn’t notice you picking at your food as she prattles about some petition she’s going to get the whole school to sign.

You scribble your signature. ( _you’d just be another dead heather_ ).

Kurt and Ram didn’t say much about what they’d done to you( _Ram had fucked you before, you suppose, so that didn’t make you anything to brag about)_ , busy boasting about Veronica. Veronica, who’d left you in a field with two drunk horny jocks. ( _Is that what friends are supposed to do? What would Heather have done?_ ) but although they didn’t say anything, you still feel gross and dirty. You’re almost happy you don’t have to deal with them looking at you anymore _(that’s a terrible thing to say, Heather, what would God think?)_ Your mother’s always been a Good Christian, and you try to be one too, even if nobody seems to quite know what that is. _(What if you killed Kurt and Ram, Heather? What if you’re cursed?)_

You call up a radio show that night and you just start talking. About your problems, about how you feel. You don’t like the smarmy-sounding host, but you know Heather and Veronica love the show. Maybe they’ll be listening. (Maybe they’ll understand). A girl can hope, right?


	11. i'd die to be where you are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're just so tired.  
> TW: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts

You were wrong. 

“Sorry about what happened to Ram, Madonna,” a freshman has the nerve to toss out to you on your way to class. “That happen to everyone you sleep with?”

“‘God has cursed me, I think,’” you hear one of the preppy girls mimicking, amid laughter from her friends. Everything is too loud and too _much_ , and your throat all of a sudden feels tight, and when you swallow your saliva feels oily, like alcohol or Dra— _something else._

“Fucking slut,” sneers a girl in a blue cardigan. Even the _stoners_ catcall you on your way to class. 

With every step you take, the little bottle of your mom’s sleep medication rattles against your hip.

 

 _Poor little Heather_ is written on the board when you walk into class in a loopy cursive vaguely reminiscent of Heather Chandler’s handwriting. Tears prick your eyes and you feel bile rising in the back of your throat as behind you, you hear Heather Duke laugh. It’s a cruel laugh, and nothing like her usual snort-giggle that she (used to) let out when the three of you and Veronica were spending time together. You try so hard not to look at her.

Veronica has her head bent, avoiding eye contact. You have no one

 

You stand in the bathroom for a minute, clutching the bottle. You just want to see Heather again, is that so fucking selfish?


End file.
